Blood Nucleoside and Nucleotide Studies in Mental Disease

Abstract

The generally accepted (Waelsch and Weil-Malherbe, 1964) reduction in the rate of glucose utilization in cases of severe depression could not be confirmed with specifically determined blood glucose in patients given diets high in carbohydrate for three or four days before testing (Herzberg, Coppen and Marks, 1968; Hansen, 1969). Nevertheless, in numerical agreement with previous findings with older methods for blood sugar determination (Henneman, Altschule and Gonz, 1954; Balter and Efron, 1965), depression as a symptom in psychosis correlated highly with elevation of non-glucose carbohydrate concentrations as determined by the colorimetric anthrone method. It was found that elevated whole blood uridine diphosphate glucose (UDPG), enzymatically determined, correlated with depression in psychosis (Hansen, 1969).